When Should I Change My Strings?

Today we will tackle a very common question we receive here at the shop – “how often should I change my guitar strings?” Believe it or not, there isn’t really a firm answer to this question. It really depends on how often you are playing your guitar and various other factors that we will address in this post.

Generally, our techs at the shop recommend a string change if you notice the following:

1) your strings begin to lose their “brilliance”; a term used to describe when a string starts to sound flat and dull.

2) your strings begin to physically look dirty or splotchy.

3) your strings aren’t achieving their desired intonation.

4) one of your strings break and it’s not due to a sharp burr at the saddles or the nut; it’s often best to change them all at once so they remain consistent

What the Big Brands vs. Players Recommend

Different companies and players have different thoughts about when to change your strings. According to Martin, they recommend the following in their Guitar Care & Feeding Guide:

There is no set rule for how often you should change your strings. If you have strings which are worn, flattened, kinked, corroded, rusted or mucked up with sweat grease and grime, then it is definitely time to change your strings. Really, the only other determining factor should be that if your strings are no longer giving you the tone, brightness and response that you desire, then it’s probably time to change them.

A few months ago, we asked our customers via Facebook & Twitter how often they changed their strings and these were some of the responses:

What Kind of Strings Should I Use?

This also varies greatly upon playing style and preference. Jazz players often prefer flat wounds and a heavier gauge, whereas a standard rock & roll guy may just prefer round wounds. Here’s some things we usually recommend:

* For the average electric guitar player, we recommend .010-.046 round wounds.

* For the average acoustic guitar player, we recommend .012-.053 gauge phosphor bronze.

There are so many types of brands out there, it’s hard to list them all. We stock D’Addario and Dunlop here at SF Guitarworks. We find D’Addario to be consistent (machine made, consistent ball end colorings so it’s easy to identify where they go, etc.) and we also love supporting the “hand made in California” Dunlops. Some people prefer coated strings like Elixirs or even the brass coated sounds of Thomastik-Infeld Power-Brights. We recommend trying a few to get a feel of what you like.

]]>http://sfguitarworks.com/changing-strings/feed/0SF Guitarworks Video Feature & Holiday Hours 2014http://sfguitarworks.com/sf-guitarworks-video-feature-holiday-hours-2014/
http://sfguitarworks.com/sf-guitarworks-video-feature-holiday-hours-2014/#commentsSat, 20 Dec 2014 21:11:04 +0000http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=4048Recently, we were interviewed by students of Academy of Art University about our shop. Check out the video below to learn a bit more about our behind-the-scenes process.

Come bring your instrument by on Saturday December 13th 2014 for an assessment and get a free pack of Dunlop (electric or acoustic) or D’Addario NYXL (electric only) strings! You have no obligation to leave the instrument, but if you’ve been thinking about getting something looked at for a while, now could be the time to have it examined by one of our expert repair techs. See you Saturday.

]]>http://sfguitarworks.com/free-strings-on-121314/feed/0Thanksgiving Holiday Hours!http://sfguitarworks.com/thanksgiving-holiday-hours/
http://sfguitarworks.com/thanksgiving-holiday-hours/#commentsThu, 27 Nov 2014 02:14:35 +0000http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=3860Just to let our customers know, we will be closed in observance of Thanksgiving on the following days:

Thursday November 27th 2014
Friday November 28th 2014

We will reopen on Saturday November 29th from 11 am- 5pm.

Also, we will be having an in-store event for Small Business Saturday (November 29th).

Bring in any work order over $25 and receive a free pair of D’Addario NYXL or Dunlop strings.

Best wishes for a great holiday season and as always, thanks for your support.

We recently reset the neck of this 47-year old Martin acoustic guitar; check out the steps we took here to carry out this very detailed procedure.

]]>http://sfguitarworks.com/reseting-a-neck/feed/0The Complex World of Tuninghttp://sfguitarworks.com/the-complex-world-of-tuning/
http://sfguitarworks.com/the-complex-world-of-tuning/#commentsSat, 25 Oct 2014 00:54:21 +0000http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=3462No matter your skill level as a fretted instrument player, you’ll sound a heck of a lot better if you are beautifully in tune and your instrument is well intonated. When intonation is correct, the fretted notes are in tune with the open string note. One thousand years ago when we were all playing fretless lutes and ouds with rough wooden tuning pegs, being in tune depended completely on the keenness of your ear. Then, someone invented tied-on movable frets, which made playing less dependent on pitch perception. Fast forward to the present with modern tuning gears, factory-made strings (rather than the local cat’s gut), fret placement accuracy to 1/1000 of an inch, and electronic pitch detectors – the possibility of being very in tune is available to all. Let’s examine the whole string path – tuning machines, nut, strings, fret crowns, neck shape and saddles – one by one with a word thrown in about electronic tuners.

Tuning Machines
We like beautiful handmade objects as much as anybody and the last 15 years has seen a flowering of handmade tuners. Rogers, Alessi, Graf, Robson, and Gilbert are notable makers whose tuners go for $300-$1200 (the Alessi Hauser tuners shown to the left are hand engraved in Italy, photo ref. LMI). Next are the top-notch factory tuners: Gotoh, Schaller, Hipshot, Grover, Sperzel, Waverly, Rubner, which are in the $50–$200 range. Below that are stamped out economy tuners. For playing in tune easily, your tuners should move smoothly and stay where you put them. You pay more for beauty and wooden knobs and slightly more for better tuning ratios (from 12:1 to 21:1), but the take-home lesson for our primary goal (being really in tune) is that any tuner at the $50 and up price point works about the same and that you should never suffer with less then buttery, easy-to-turn tuners. Even the relatively inexpensive ones work wonderfully and they are easy to replace.

Nut
Leaving the tuners, the strings cross the nut. Three parameters are key to tuning ease here: 1) the free vibrating area of the string must start exactly at the fingerboard edge of the nut, 2) the string must not bind in its slot, and 3) the string slot cannot be too high off the fingerboard. For correct intonation, points 1 and 3 are critical. Because the nut is typically bone or plastic (relatively soft compared to the metal of the strings) it wears down with tuning and all three parameters will need to be adjusted occasionally.

Strings
This is the area of greatest choice in instrument shopping with way too many brands and types to list. Very broadly speaking, the differences are materials that sound brighter/darker and coatings that keep dirt off the strings and extend their usable life. Two parameters are key to our tuning pursuit: using the gauge of strings your instrument was set up for (switching from medium 56–13 to light 46–10 will affect your intonation) and keeping your strings fresh. Once you’ve played strings for 3–40 hours (depending on your sweat level and how hard you hit) or if they become corroded or won’t stay in tune, it’s time to change them.

Fret Crowns
The side view of a good fret looks like this.

A string contacts it like this. The string should contact the fret at a tangent point, that is, at as narrow a point as is physically possible. That contact point should also be exactly in the middle of the fret.

A worn fret looks like this.

A string contacts it like this. This leads to a less-than perfectly in-tune note (not referencing from the center point) and fret buzzing (a different topic).

Neck Shape
Under string tension (100-170 pounds of pull depending on your string gauge), the neck pulls up into a gentle curve. This curvature can be measured in thousandths of an inch. A range of 4 – 8 thousandths is normal and is set for the player’s style; much more than that can start to affect intonation.

Saddle
The saddle, like the nut and frets, terminates the string at an exact and narrow point. Like the nut and frets, if it has a flat spot, it will not play perfectly in tune. Unlike the nut and frets, which are straight lines perpendicular to the instrument’s centerline, the saddle is compensated, which means it creates individual end points for each string based on that string’s diameter and pitch. The compensation of each string’s saddle position is critical to playing in tune. The saddle is also the main determiner of the action, which is the height of the strings above the frets. Like neck shape, a range of action settings is acceptable and is set for the player’s style. However, very high action will throw the intonation off considerably.

Electronic Tuners
Lastly, each open string should be tuned to whatever note you are assigning to it with an accurate electronic tuner. These are rated in accuracy by cents, a musical measurement that is 1/100th of a half step. Look for a tuner that is rated accurate to +/- 1 cent. Clip on tuners, pedal tuners and phone app tuners all work very well. For really accurate tuning and intonation work, use a Peterson tuner or Peterson app, accurate to 1/10 of a cent.

To sum up, it’s much more pleasant to be really in tune and this can be achieved fairly easily these days with a good overall setup, fresh strings, working tuning machines and a solid electronic tuner.

http://sfguitarworks.com/happy-holidays-from-sf-guitarworks/feed/0Guess the Scanhttp://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan/
http://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan/#commentsTue, 15 Oct 2013 17:45:13 +0000http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=3158The Plek is an incredible tool that we use to get a very accurate picture of the fret plane, which directly affects the playability of the instrument. We’ve seen bad fretwork on both expensive and inexpensive guitars. The inconsistency is always a surprise, so we have decided to make it a game!

The scans show the fretboard plane along the G string indicated by the black line. The valleys would be the board and the hills would be the frets. The red line show the plane of the fret tops and the green line represents the ideal fret plane.

This time around, we are throwing two similar red dot Gibson ES335s into the ring. The big difference is in their age. Oh… and the 82 ES335 has the neck pickup turned around.

GUITARS

1982 ES335:

1997 ES335:

SCANS

A:

This scan shows a hump in the middle of the board.

B:

Here we see there’s a dip in the fret plane after the first fret.

Guess which scan belongs to which guitar!

Answers will be posted on Friday.

]]>http://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan/feed/0Guess the Scan: Answers for Episode 1http://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan-answers-for-episode-1/
http://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan-answers-for-episode-1/#commentsFri, 04 Oct 2013 19:21:54 +0000http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=3155This week we went for the obvious. The Fender is scan B with the more even frets. Stay tuned for next weeks episode!
]]>http://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan-answers-for-episode-1/feed/0Guess the Scanhttp://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan-2/
http://sfguitarworks.com/guess-the-scan-2/#commentsTue, 01 Oct 2013 22:14:45 +0000http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=2988The Plek is an incredible tool that we use to get a very accurate picture of the fret plane, which directly affects the playability of the instrument. We’ve seen bad fretwork on both expensive and inexpensive guitars. The inconsistency is always a surprise, so we have decided to make it a game!

For our first Guess the Scan, we have two similar Telecasters. One is a Made in Mexico Tele and the other is a Korean Squier. The scans show the fretboard plane along the G string indicated by the black line. The valleys would be the board and the hills would be the frets. The red line show the plane of the fret tops and the green line represents the ideal fret plane.